


Siren Song

by Seascribe



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: AU, Gen, Mermaids, anthropophagy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seascribe/pseuds/Seascribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Cottia is an anthropophagous mermaid and Placidus goes on a sea voyage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Siren Song

**Author's Note:**

> For Citruses. Contains non-graphic mentions of people being eaten.

Cottia has had better luck with sailors. It's not easy being a mermaid. Oh, to be sure, men at sea are helpless to resist your beautiful voice and flowing locks, and a meal is a meal, but so many sailors are tough, stringy, and grizzled. And there is very little sport in seducing those beleaguered men, old and worn with labour, months and miles away from their last sight of a woman. It is only from the waist up that she is a woman, but that seems to make her more than woman enough for them. And of course if it did not, there is always her song.

There is something about this sailor that Cottia does not like at all. Oh, he is pleasing enough to look upon, but something in his face suggests that he is well aware of it. Not that Cottia can fault him for that; she too is well aware of her beauty. Anyway it is not that which puts her off; perhaps it is the disdainful set of his mouth. Whatever it is, it matters not, because his little rowboat, floating out beyond the breakers, is the first boat to pass this way in recent days and Cottia is famished. She wonders how he came to be there, without any larger ship in evidence. She hopes that she has merely misjudged him, for he is not old or grizzled or ugly, and this could be a rare sport and an even rarer treat, if he is as fine a morsel as he looks.

She realises what the problem is when he comes within earshot.

"You did not choose a very nice island, did you?" he says. That is the first thing he says to her! She sniffs indignantly and tosses her hair. Her island is perfectly nice. The rocks are good for sunning and there are plenty of ships passing by, which is really what counts. And even if he did not like her island, he might at least have said something nice to her. Cottia forces herself to smile alluringly, giving him a second chance. Which he squanders.

"In the stories, they say that sirens are deadly beautiful. Why, you look just like any girl. Are you not even going to try and seduce me?"

Perhaps the reason he is alone in his little rowboat is because the other sailors grew sick of his rude tongue and marooned him. If she were a sailor, Cottia is sure that is what she would have done. But she is not a sailor, she is a mermaid, and a very hungry one at that. And this is not turning out to be nearly as sporting as she had hoped it would be.

Her song is high and lilting, like the wind singing around the peaks of her rocks, sharply beautiful. The sailor's face loses its haughty expression, going slack with rapture. Cottia smiles. This is how it is supposed to be. She spares a moment to regret that he was such a fool--she would have liked to have seduced him properly--but he is every bit as fine a meal as she had hoped.


End file.
